How to catch all exceptions in c# using try and catch?

Question

I want to write some try and catch that catch any type or exception, is this code is enough (that's the way to do in Java)?

try { code.... } catch (Exception ex){} 

Or should it be

try { code.... } catch {} 

?

Answer 1

Both approaches will catch all exceptions. There is no significant difference between your two code examples except that the first will generate a compiler warning because ex is declared but not used.

But note that some exceptions are special and will be rethrown automatically.

ThreadAbortException is a special exception that can be caught, but it will automatically be raised again at the end of the catch block.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.threading.threadabortexception.aspx

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As mentioned in the comments, it is usually a very bad idea to catch and ignore all exceptions. Usually you want to do one of the following instead:

• Catch and ignore a specific exception that you know is not fatal.

  catch (SomeSpecificException) {     // Ignore this exception. } 

• Catch and log all exceptions.

  catch (Exception e) {     // Something unexpected went wrong.     Log(e);     // Maybe it is also necessary to terminate / restart the application. } 

• Catch all exceptions, do some cleanup, then rethrow the exception.

  catch {     SomeCleanUp();     throw; } 

Note that in the last case the exception is rethrown using throw; and not throw ex;.